Author Topic: What are you playing?  (Read 692185 times)

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Offline Adrock

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1450 on: January 20, 2018, 11:45:25 PM »
Yeah, that’s a pretty accurate description. I still liked it though it’s another game I’m probably not playing alone so I doubt I’ll ever get decent at the game. For me, the local multiplayer aspect is making it worthwhile to me.

Same with Cuphead. It’s so difficult that I’d be screaming profanity at my TV at home. With a friend, it’s a completely different experience.

Offline Soren

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1451 on: January 22, 2018, 08:43:29 PM »
I feel like coop Cuphead is insanely harder than solo.
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Offline Stratos

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1452 on: January 23, 2018, 12:03:22 AM »
Probably depends on the skill of your playing partner.
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Offline Adrock

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1453 on: January 23, 2018, 09:52:12 AM »
I feel like coop Cuphead is insanely harder than solo.
I haven’t played solo. I’m basing my expectations on my self-observed limits of personal video game skill (which is low to medium). Parrying a partner’s ghost to stay alive is something my friend and I did often through several stages.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1454 on: January 23, 2018, 12:51:41 PM »
The middle 1/3 of Persona 5 is exhausting. The dungeons remind me a lot of the puzzle dungeons in TMS: they go on for so long that I've long since stopped caring & really start resenting the game by the time it's finished. Just constant Rules of 3s on top of Rules of 3s on top of Rules of 3s leading to a grueling 5 hour dungeon crawl for what should be a 1.5 - 2 hour dungeon.

And because SMT refuses to allow auto-saves or battle restarts outside the lowest difficulty level, enemies opening a battle by going after your MC can easily lead to a Game Over where you lose an hour of playtime since your last save room. It's just needlessly punitive & disrespectful of the player's time.

And good god I LOATHE the game's framing device, which spoils major plot points up to a dozen hours before they occur. The Social Links are also incredibly samey & redundant of previous ones in the series.

I still like the game, but it's easy to see why it turned off so many fans. Writing-wise, it's a huge steps down from P4.


As for Cuphead, the last regular boss I have is the mad scientist in the giant robot, and I just can't get past it.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2018, 03:13:37 PM by broodwars »
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Offline ejamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1455 on: January 23, 2018, 01:23:10 PM »
So I've played enough Risk of Rain (Vita) now to have an opinion.


It's pretty good, but also seems kind of throw-away. Luck plays a large role in how long you'll last because some pick-ups are notably better than others... but even with bad luck you can last a good long time if you play well. The action is solid and there are plenty of characters with significant differences in how they play. The number of weapons and items that might be available (many locked when you first start playing) is enough to bring you back repeatedly. One of my favorite parts is a pretty solid soundtrack tying the whole package together - although I the music might wear thin over time.


I like it, and expect to drop a bunch of hours playing.
Is it worth recommending? Depends on what games you like. This isn't a universal "go play this game" experience... but it's pretty neat and probably worth a try. Just realize that most classes take a bit of effort to learn how to play effectively, and that you'll probably die a bunch while learning.
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Offline MagicCow64

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1456 on: January 23, 2018, 02:25:14 PM »
I found co-op Cuphead to be so hard as to not be worth bothering with (though granted, I haven't been 100% sober the times I've tried it). Both myself and by partner had both beaten the game, and we were struggling badly to get through the first world. The extreme health buff of the bosses in combination with having to navigate around each other and the extra visual confusion is just too much, though the ghost parrying is a neat idea.

@broodwars Yeah, the robot is a major pain in the ass. I think the regular mode difficulty is kind of overblown, but the first stage of the robot and the dragon were definitely chokepoints for me. Part of the issue with the robot is that there's really poor visual feedback for the "shrink" function.

Offline Evan_B

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1457 on: January 23, 2018, 03:22:28 PM »
While I have no particular exposure to Persona Dungeons or structure, something I would note about TMS' dungeon design is that it is more or less all the content of the game. The hubs are extremely small and there's very little NPC interaction to be had, so their extended structure and length seems justified. Maybe that isn't the case with P5.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1458 on: January 23, 2018, 04:27:33 PM »
While I have no particular exposure to Persona Dungeons or structure, something I would note about TMS' dungeon design is that it is more or less all the content of the game. The hubs are extremely small and there's very little NPC interaction to be had, so their extended structure and length seems justified. Maybe that isn't the case with P5.

Yeah, P5 has a much more elaborate town structure than TMS has. The way that P5 likes to break its dungeons into 3rds, each of which requires you to complete 3 puzzles in a room or hallway broken into 3 chunks just reminds me of TMS' dungeon design.

In TMS' defense, what takes so long there is that battles take 5x longer than they need to because of all the session chaining.

In the previous 2 Persona games, these dungeons were randomly generated hallways & rooms without puzzles. You just explored & slaughtered through them to the end. P5, however, has set layouts with elaborate puzzle or sleuthing sections.

For example, one of the later dungeons had me going through a spaceport, which was divided into a Barracks, a Factory, & a series of airlocks to reach the final room.

To get into the factory, you had to go through 3 sets of interlocking hallways & rooms in the Barracks, gathering clues to determine which larger enemy to take out for a key. You then move into the next set where you backtrack through both areas doing the same thing. You then move into the LAST set where you do it all over again.

Then you gain access to the factory, where you try to cross 3 sets of conveyor belts by stopping, destroying, & crossing presses & work arms.

Then you gain access to the airlocks, which are 3 sets of switch-based mazes with doors opening & closing depending on how you enter them & which switches are flicked.

ALL THIS for one dungeon, and if you want to play efficiently you're doing this in ONE 4-5 hour run, with NO resupply. And that's not taking into account the time you lose when a new enemy party-wipes you. It's pure tedium.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2018, 04:38:24 PM by broodwars »
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Offline lolmonade

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1459 on: January 24, 2018, 09:31:17 AM »
Rocket league like any sports or game has a learning curve. I find the problem for me beyond me sucking is the high level play is absurd. With other sports after learning the rules and playing some games you get an idea of what is happening so when you watch a pro game you have a feel for it.

Not so with RL, it feels BS with flying turbo boost. That aspect of the game is pretty much useless to me as even in the tutorial I barely managed to execute any reasonable moves and that require a lot of repetition just to do it once. It lacks the easy to start, hard to master. It's more stupid hard to start, disgustingly horrible to even consider mastering. Win or lose you don't know why.

It also lacks any sort of skill transfer in or out. Whatever you know about driving or piloting is inapplicable to this game.


So....bear in mind i'm roughly gold rank after probably a good thousand hours in Rocket league between PS4 and PC, so definitely not top tier.  But mastering flying boost is something IMO that is much less important than figuring out good field positioning, the right time to be aggressive vs when to try and counter your opponent, and if you're playing 2s or 3s - proper cycling of offense and defense positions. 


Really, you see these gifs online of air ballers flying the ball all the way across the field, I think that represents the top 1% of players.  I think if you work on the above, as well as figure out enough of flight to hit air balls towards the goal or make saves, you'll be in good shape.

Offline Mop it up

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1460 on: January 24, 2018, 05:38:48 PM »
The game fails to live up to my expectations, but those expectations were based entirely off nostalgia for the original - which probably wouldn't hold up all that well today if I were to play it.
It makes some sense, the sequel has a different feel to it so I can see how a fan of the first game would be disappointed in it. Myself, I never played either game when I was a kid, so I had no expectations for them.

One thing I'll say though is that the story is probably better in the first game, though it doesn't really bother me. Some of the events in the sequel skew more towards a forced ripoff.

Offline Soren

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1461 on: January 25, 2018, 01:28:14 PM »
So....bear in mind i'm roughly gold rank after probably a good thousand hours in Rocket league between PS4 and PC, so definitely not top tier.  But mastering flying boost is something IMO that is much less important than figuring out good field positioning, the right time to be aggressive vs when to try and counter your opponent, and if you're playing 2s or 3s - proper cycling of offense and defense positions. 


Really, you see these gifs online of air ballers flying the ball all the way across the field, I think that represents the top 1% of players.  I think if you work on the above, as well as figure out enough of flight to hit air balls towards the goal or make saves, you'll be in good shape.


Positioning is so key in Rocket League, but most people just want to be the dude after the ball. And most matches end up being like a children's soccer game. Everyone running after the ball. Once you start to recognize the angles the ball takes once it goes into a corner you can start to learn where you need to be to score goals or to have key scoring chances.
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Offline lolmonade

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1462 on: January 26, 2018, 09:01:54 AM »
So....bear in mind i'm roughly gold rank after probably a good thousand hours in Rocket league between PS4 and PC, so definitely not top tier.  But mastering flying boost is something IMO that is much less important than figuring out good field positioning, the right time to be aggressive vs when to try and counter your opponent, and if you're playing 2s or 3s - proper cycling of offense and defense positions. 


Really, you see these gifs online of air ballers flying the ball all the way across the field, I think that represents the top 1% of players.  I think if you work on the above, as well as figure out enough of flight to hit air balls towards the goal or make saves, you'll be in good shape.


Positioning is so key in Rocket League, but most people just want to be the dude after the ball. And most matches end up being like a children's soccer game. Everyone running after the ball. Once you start to recognize the angles the ball takes once it goes into a corner you can start to learn where you need to be to score goals or to have key scoring chances.


You're not wrong about the way others play.  That said, unlike Overwatch, even if your teammates aren't playing well, you playing this role well and positioning yourself for good counter-hits CAN swing the momentum of a match.   

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1463 on: January 26, 2018, 10:37:56 AM »
Nearing the end of P5 (11/27), and thankfully the Casino dungeon was a LOT more enjoyable (and shorter) than the preceding dungeons. The story does a lot of cheating in regards to its reveal of the Killer this time, but it kind of works.
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Offline lolmonade

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1464 on: January 29, 2018, 03:24:38 PM »
After toying-around with the beta, and in spite of not being a big Anime fan, I picked up Dragonball FighterZZZZZZZZZ on Steam.  I've been in a drought for fighting games since I was disappointed with Street Fighter V, and REALLY didn't like how Marvel v. Capcom: Infinite felt, as well as how ugly the characters kind of seemed, everything just felt like a step back from 3.


For starters, this game is beautiful.  The characters are stunning, vibrant, and all look the closest to their Anime counterparts that I have ever seen in a video game.  The attacks all look great, and are just as flashy and exaggerated as you'd want them to be.  The backgrounds are a little more hit-or-miss in how chunky or drab things look, but it's really only noticeable when you're not moving, which is extremely rare.  Regarding sound, the announcer is energetic and excited without being annoying, the effects match what I recall from the show, and the voice actors from what I hear pretty much sound the same as I remember (outside of kid Gohan, VA change?), so if they aren't all original, they're a close enough analogue.


Gameplay-wise, with the caveat that I'm not a pro fighter, this game feels like the Marvel v. Capcom I've been missing since 2.  The movement is frantic without being overwhelming.  The special moves seem to be mostly constrained to Hadouken-type quarter circles, and there are both traditional move chains or a pre-set combo you can play by hitting one button repeatedly (although the damaged received by this is less than doing it proper).   There are block-breakers, combos you can chain by tagging in your other players, and cancels that all feel useful in their own way. 


Here's my only real grievances - the story mode and the way lobbies are set-up.  The story mode is a flimsy map you have to make selections across to encounter various battles prior to particular map points that enact a story beat.  It acts as an ok tutorial, but it has an awful lot of bloat IMO and not worth it.  The writing seems like they're working real hard to make fun of themselves quite a bit, which is not quite what I was looking for as someone who hasn't been engaged in this franchise in a while.  I'll go to Dragonball Z Abridged if I want to see someone make jabs at DBZ. 


Regarding the lobbies - rather than being assigned a lobby when you first login, the game makes you select one.  One of the problems is that the game seems awfully popular (or they didn't plan for this many people), so you have to select from a list of lobbies to get logged-in, often times being full before you're able to select it.  I'd really appreciate just having an option to just select a mode/match type rather than have to go through their Chibi world to do so. 


Those are really minor quibbles compared to what I've experienced of the game.  Super happy with it so far.

Offline broodwars

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1465 on: January 31, 2018, 02:28:44 AM »
I've beaten Persona 5. My game clock sits at 98 hours. This game would have been twice as good if it were 40-50 hours shorter. The game's full of padding, both in the dungeon crawling & in the lengthy plot conversations scenes that often spend the better part of 10 minutes going nowhere & saying nothing interesting. I still like the game overall, but it's in some ways both the strongest of the P3-era Persona games... and the weakest.
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Offline azeke

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1466 on: January 31, 2018, 11:49:48 PM »
After listening to Shantae podcast with creator of a game and how much work it was to make it all work on 8-bit machine, i remembered first Gameboy Color game is on sale for 3DS and so i bought it.

Matt Bozon talking about technical tricks they did to overcome GBC restriction was compelling to me because i actually was reading up on NES development out of curiosity this week. Really neat stuff all around.

But the reason what pushed to look into NES development because i am playing a "programming game" TIS-100 which is basically a CPU and in many respects it's super constraints and you have to do similar insane tricks to make it all fit to execute problems game asks of you. So i wanted to see how my experience of compressing and re-using the code of TIS-100 compares to developers' of earlier 8-bit machines.

So i played some Shantae and it's a very neat game, but the opening level is definitely pointless big as Bozon admits. Pixel art and animations are cute.

As always Binding of Isaac is a mainstay, last time i checked i have over 500 hours on Switch port. I just play a daily game to reach "beat 30 dailies" achievement and unlock "Broken Modem" item.

My "main" game these days is Punch-Out for NES. I bought the game for 3DS and also play it on retroachievements emulator. Yesterday i finally beat Mr. Sandman for the first time. It took me like a week to learn how to dodge his series of super fast uppercuts from left-right.

Other games i played are:

  • Aztez -- finally managed to beat a campaign by repelling spanish invaders,. However i didn't do any optional missions and didn't face any of the big bosses of the game (Emperor, Cortez, Underworld boss) so i will have to do that in next runs.
  • Pac-man 256 -- i just play it for some mindless fun or when i want to listen to podcast that requires attention.
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Offline GK

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1467 on: February 04, 2018, 09:53:07 AM »
Plan on getting a Switch this year so going on a farewell tour with the original Mario Kart 8 lately. Glad to see things are still pretty active online despite Deluxe's release.
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Offline JollyRogger92

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1468 on: February 09, 2018, 07:15:51 AM »
After watching some Persona 5 on cohh twitch channel i decided to buy the game - I really liked the plot and wanted to try it out myself. I was worried that the game would incomprehensible to someone who has never played and knows nothing about any Persona game, but I'm doing perfectly fine for the first few hours of the game.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2018, 07:18:04 AM by JollyRogger92 »

Offline Evan_B

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1469 on: February 11, 2018, 12:25:19 PM »
So.

Darksiders.

I plan on doing a much more substantial write-up for this series in the long run, but I'm playing Warmastered Edition for Wii U after having played the Deathinitive Edition maybe... gosh, three or four years ago? I wasn't too keen on that game, but I've since warmed up to the series because there's nothing else really like it out there, and the difficulty is surprisingly satisfying. Dodge mechanics are great, the puzzles are straightforward but there's plenty of side content to be exploited, and the second game has a great alternate weapon system, in particular.

So I booted up Warmastered as was immediately like "oh right, this was the first game." There's some pretty bizarre choices here, as the tutorials teach you to dodge before blocking, because the first set of mid-tier enemies you encounter have unblockable attacks. It sort of weirds me out that you would choose to do this in an action-adventure game, but then I remembered ultimately Darksiders doesn't really know what it wants to be. Is it character action? Well, there are launchers, but the aerial combos are pretty awful from the opening because they leave you vulnerable to attack. There's a combo meter, but it really doesn't contribute to any sort of rank or reward system. There are parry mechanics, but the window for execution is very long. The low-tier enemies can be instant killed with a single input. So if that's not what it wants to be, then is it an action-adventure akin to Zelda? Eh, kind of. There's a lot of telegraphing that goes on in the puzzle design that doesn't encourage player thought, but there are some side-puzzles that are kind of neat and open up new rooms and such. The dungeon design is pretty painfully linear, and so far, the inventory additions have been a bit rote and bland. The game's boomerang is neat, though.

So what is Darksiders, really? Well, I think it's simply a game that has one foot in a pool of character action and the other in action adventure. Neither is particularly outstanding, but they also aren't offensive. The narrative is just dumb, so you certainly shouldn't be playing it for that. There's some mythology and I can respect the series for going all in with regards to aesthetic and world-building, but there's little of real substance. There's a lot of in-game currency to be had, and most of it is spent on unlocking further combo chains for combat, but the way the weapon level-up system works is a bit ass-backwards and doesn't promote neat combination attacks. I'm certainly going to beat the game, but there's a lot of potential here that feels untapped in ways that the sequel partly improved, but also ignored.

Also, I'm hoping Darksiders 3 comes to Switch so I can ruthlessly critique that, as well.
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Offline Order.RSS

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1470 on: February 11, 2018, 03:01:34 PM »
I was worried that the game would incomprehensible to someone who has never played and knows nothing about any Persona game, but I'm doing perfectly fine for the first few hours of the game.


I remember having the same concerns before trying out Tokyo Mirage Sessions (which is a sort of Persona spin-off), but yeah it turned out the entry barrier was pretty low after all! With the exception of Xenoblade and possibly Monster Hunter I feel like many JRPGs lately have started to make real strides when it comes to accessiblity for newcomers.


So.

Darksiders.


Looking forward to reading more extensive impressions. I got Darksiders Warmastered in a recent sale as well. Haven't booted it up yet, but it looked both intensely dumb (hate the overdesigned characters) as well as kinda fun (again in a stupid way). Have heard the Zelda comparison before though so I won't start it for a while still, since I'm about a quarter way into Breath of the Wild and will probably want a break after that.

Offline ejamer

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1471 on: February 19, 2018, 07:45:22 PM »
So I really enjoyed Boom Blox on Wii. It was simple, but well executed and felt like they packed in as much content as possible around the key concept of knocking over a tower of blocks.  So I was curious to see how Boom Blox Bash Party (also Wii) would improve on the formula since it received higher ratings.


Initially, things seemed pretty normal. A few new concepts thrown in, and it felt like they lost focus somewhere along the way because there was a lot of time spent on ideas that weren't as good or "pure" as they focused on in the original. Then I got to the UFO levels, where you have to knock over blocks before UFOs can steal them. I'm not saying the entire game is garbage, but enough of the levels in there fit that description that my interest in playing further has been absolutely murdered.


Normally I won't abandon a game after getting more than 75% finished. Bash Party did it, though. Recommendation? Stick to the original game, or bring this one out just when you want to try the multiplayer.
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Offline Mop it up

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1472 on: February 23, 2018, 12:44:56 PM »
So I was curious to see how Boom Blox Bash Party (also Wii) would improve on the formula since it received higher ratings.

Initially, things seemed pretty normal. A few new concepts thrown in, and it felt like they lost focus somewhere along the way because there was a lot of time spent on ideas that weren't as good or "pure" as they focused on in the original.
Interesting you would say that, as I felt the sequel did a mostly good job avoiding the types of levels which felt borderline broken in the original Boom Blox. Not to say there aren't still some with frustrating mechanics, but on the whole the level design felt a lot more solid to me. Though, I still find both games to be lacking overall, but I liked the sequel better.

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Offline Stratos

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1473 on: February 23, 2018, 08:30:05 PM »
I would love a new Boom Blox on Switch. Those were great party games.
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Offline Adrock

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #1474 on: February 24, 2018, 09:37:13 AM »
Put some time into Axiom Verge on Switch. It’s basically Metroid.